Simplicity, Lesson 10
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Table of Contents
- The framework of the series and the difficulty in the basic definition
- Aharon Shemesh, an operational definition versus a linguistic definition, and Nachmanides on the Torah’s wording
- The halakhic implications are not a substitute for the defining question
- The substantive proposal: a positive state versus a negative state
- Positive commandment and prohibition together: Sabbath and parapet, and two commandments with overlapping content
- The zero state, “no house,” and tzitzit as a conditional commandment
- Coercion, exemption, and the distinction between neglecting a positive commandment and violating a prohibition
- Logical negations, opposites, and the structure of 1, 0, minus 1
- Secular law versus Jewish law: there is no “positive commandment” in law
- A logical example: “wants” and negation are not equivalent
- Nachmanides on “remember” and “observe”: love and fear, mercy and judgment
- The Sdei Chemed: fulfillment versus neglect, and the reversal of stringencies
- A positive commandment overrides a prohibition, “new grain” and matzah, and the asymmetry of zero
- Monetary expenditure, punishment, and uprooting a Torah law
- The abstraction: positive action and passive omission as active or passive collision
- Shofar blasts, “do not add,” the Rashba, the Turei Even, and the Sages versus a prohibition
- Human dignity and two possible explanations of passive omission
Summary
General overview
The text raises a fundamental difficulty in defining positive commandments as opposed to prohibitions, because the intuitive idea that positive commandments are “positive action” and prohibitions are “passive omission” does not hold up when tested against examples like “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” and resting on the Sabbath. Aharon Shemesh is presented as identifying a shift from an earlier operational definition to a linguistic definition based on the wording of the verse, but this framework is ultimately presented as inadequate because it does not explain the reason for the formulations or their halakhic implications. A substantive distinction is proposed, according to which a positive commandment points to a positive state while a prohibition points to a negative state, and from that there follow the rule that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition, the structure of punishment, the rules of monetary expenditure, the ability of the Sages to uproot a Torah law, and patterns involving coercion and the “zero” state. The move is presented as an abstraction of positive action and passive omission from the physical plane to the plane of active or passive collision with the will of God, and it is examined through Nachmanides, logical examples, and discussion of “do not add,” human dignity, and rabbinic enactments.
The framework of the series and the difficulty in the basic definition
The series deals with abstractions and begins with an introduction to what abstraction is and to various logical definitions of the concept. The example under discussion is the definition of positive commandments and prohibitions. The basic street-level assumption is that a positive commandment is fulfilled through positive action and neglected through passive omission, while a prohibition is fulfilled through passive omission and violated through positive action. That assumption is challenged because there are prohibitions that impose an obligation to act, like “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” and there are positive commandments that impose an obligation to refrain, like resting on the Sabbath and fasting on Yom Kippur. The central question is in what sense resting is a positive commandment and “do not stand idly by” is a prohibition, when on the operational level the picture is reversed.
Aharon Shemesh, an operational definition versus a linguistic definition, and Nachmanides on the Torah’s wording
Aharon Shemesh, a Talmud scholar from Bar-Ilan who died young, is presented as arguing that in the earlier discussions the definition is operational, based on the way the commandment is fulfilled or violated, while over the generations the definition becomes linguistic, based on the Torah’s formulation. “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” is defined as a prohibition because it is worded in negative language even though it obligates actual action. “On the seventh day you shall rest” is defined as a positive commandment because it lacks negative markers like “beware,” “lest,” “do not,” and “not,” even though in practical terms it means refraining from labor. Nachmanides is presented as explaining that the classification follows the Torah’s active formulation, but it is argued that it is hard to accept formulation as the final foundational point, because there must be a substantive reason why the Torah chose this wording rather than another.
The halakhic implications are not a substitute for the defining question
Many implications of the distinction between a positive commandment and a prohibition are listed, including the rule that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition, the requirement to spend up to one-fifth of one’s assets to fulfill a positive commandment versus all of one’s assets to avoid violating a prohibition, the fact that human dignity overrides only through passive omission, and that the Sages uproot a Torah law only through passive omission. It is argued that answers based on “for this one there is punishment and for that one there is not,” or on the other implications, do not answer the question “what is the difference” but only describe results. The text demands a substantive difference from which the implications arise, and asks why the Torah says “you shall rest” regarding the Sabbath rather than “do not do labor on the Sabbath,” when the content seems similar.
The substantive proposal: a positive state versus a negative state
A distinction is proposed according to which a positive commandment is a commandment in which the Torah points to a positive state, while a prohibition is one in which the Torah points to a negative state. “Put on tefillin” presents the state of “with tefillin” as a positive state, and its absence means not being in the positive state. A prohibition would define “without tefillin” as a negative state, and then putting them on would be framed only as avoiding the negative, not as reaching the positive. Sabbath rest is formulated as a positive commandment because the Torah wants to present rest as a positive state, not merely labor as a negative state. “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” is formulated as a prohibition because the Torah defines refraining from rescue as a negative state, even though the way to avoid that negative state is to perform an act of rescue.
Positive commandment and prohibition together: Sabbath and parapet, and two commandments with overlapping content
Regarding the Sabbath, there is both a positive commandment of rest and a prohibition on labor, and the explanation is that rest is both a positive state and doing labor is a negative state, so the Torah requires both formulations. In the case of a parapet there is a positive commandment to make a parapet and a prohibition of “do not place blood in your house,” and the distinction is that making a parapet is a positive state while a house without a parapet is a negative state. Maimonides in the sixth root is cited as holding that when there is both a positive commandment and a prohibition with overlapping content, as on the Sabbath, they are counted as two commandments rather than one, because this is different content, not mere verbal duplication. The difference is formulated as “be in a positive state” versus “do not be in a negative state,” even when the external action looks like the same action.
The zero state, “no house,” and tzitzit as a conditional commandment
The discussion turns to a “zero state” in which neither of the two states of “with parapet” and “without parapet” fully applies, because there is also a third state: “there is no house.” It is argued that when there is no house, there is no violation of the prohibition and no fulfillment of the positive commandment, and this creates a difference between “I did not violate a prohibition” and “I did not fulfill a positive commandment.” The philosophical example of “the present king of France” is used to show that sometimes there is a third state beyond the dichotomy, because there is no king at all. Regarding tzitzit, the Talmudic story of Rav Kattina and Elijah about a time of divine anger, when one is punished for not having tzitzit on his garment, is brought in connection with the question whether a person is expected to pursue a conditional commandment. It is argued that where the standard garment is one with four corners, evasion has significance, whereas when a regular shirt does not have four corners there is no issue of punishment, and this is tied to the dispute whether tzitzit is an obligation on the person or on the garment.
Coercion, exemption, and the distinction between neglecting a positive commandment and violating a prohibition
It is argued that under coercion there is a gap between a positive commandment and a prohibition: with a positive commandment, even if the person was coerced, he still did not fulfill the commandment, so there is neglect of the positive commandment even though he is not blameworthy; with a prohibition, “the Merciful One exempts one under coercion,” and some understand that as if he did not act at all. The point is explained by saying that the criterion is not operational and physical action but the substantive state of positive, zero, and negative, so in coercion the violation of a prohibition does not place the person in the negative state even though the physical act occurred. The dispute is mentioned whether coercion is regarded as if one did not act or not, and it is said that the accepted Jewish law is that coercion is as if one did not act. The picture is framed as the difference between “you did not do the commandment” and “it is as if you did not commit the transgression.”
Logical negations, opposites, and the structure of 1, 0, minus 1
A distinction is introduced between a negation that cancels and a contrary negation, with examples like light and darkness versus hot and cold, in order to argue that the opposite is not necessarily “minus one” but sometimes “zero.” It is argued that a positive commandment and a prohibition are opposites like one and minus one, and therefore a zero state sits between them, distinguishing neglect of a positive commandment from violation of a prohibition. This distinction is translated into “repairing” versus “damaging,” following a comment from a participant in the previous lecture. It is argued that one who does labor in the face of the positive commandment of “you shall rest” is in a zero state of failing to reach the positive, whereas one who violates the prohibition of labor is in a minus-one state of negativity.
Secular law versus Jewish law: there is no “positive commandment” in law
A debate is brought with Alona Eyal and Dr. Avi Eitam in which it is argued that secular law has only prohibitions and no positive commandments. Paying taxes and serving in the army are presented as cases where there is a sanction for non-performance, and therefore, from a halakhic-structural perspective, they parallel “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” meaning the avoidance of an omission that is defined as a negative state and requires action to avoid it. It is argued that the law does not “reward” the one who complies but only punishes the one who fails, so there is no state of “plus one” in it, only zero and minus one. Jewish law, by contrast, contains plus one, zero, and minus one, and therefore the substantive distinction between a positive commandment and a prohibition does not exist in secular law as it does in Jewish law.
A logical example: “wants” and negation are not equivalent
It is argued that the assumption of equivalence between “put on tefillin” and “I do not want you not to put on tefillin” is logically mistaken. The negation of “I want you to put on tefillin” is not “I want you not to put on tefillin” but “it is not true that I want you to put on tefillin.” It is explained that you cannot switch the place of “not” and “want,” and that the two operators are not commutative. A discussion of the paradox “all Cretans are liars” is brought to show that from “the sentence is false” there does not follow “the complete opposite” but rather “not all,” and that this is how the paradox is solved. A map is then summarized of four different states: a positive commandment requiring action, a positive commandment requiring refraining, a prohibition on action, and a prohibition on refraining, where the distinction between a positive commandment and a prohibition depends on want versus not-want, not on action versus refraining.
Nachmanides on “remember” and “observe”: love and fear, mercy and judgment
Nachmanides on Parashat Yitro is cited as saying that the quality of “remember” is alluded to in positive commandments and stems from the quality of love and belongs to the quality of mercy, while the quality of “observe” is in prohibitions and belongs to the quality of judgment and stems from the quality of fear. Nachmanides says that a positive commandment is greater than a prohibition, just as love is greater than fear, and therefore a positive commandment comes and overrides a prohibition. He also says that for this reason the punishment for prohibitions is greater, and legal penalties such as lashes and death are imposed for them, while for positive commandments no such legal penalty is imposed at all, except coercive measures to compel fulfillment. It is argued that Nachmanides presents a model in which a positive commandment is a movement of love and desired action, while a prohibition is a movement of fear and guarding oneself from evil.
The Sdei Chemed: fulfillment versus neglect, and the reversal of stringencies
The Sdei Chemed is cited as explaining that there is no contradiction between saying “a positive commandment is greater than a prohibition” and saying “for a prohibition there is punishment and for a positive commandment there is not.” Fulfilling a positive commandment is one state, and it is more significant than merely avoiding a prohibition, which is a zero state, and therefore a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. Violating a prohibition is a minus-one state and is more severe than neglecting a positive commandment, which is a zero state, and therefore punishment belongs to a prohibition and not to a positive commandment. An example is brought of rescuing someone in a river: jumping into a raging river is a more heroic act than extending a stick, but refraining from extending a stick is seen as worse than refraining from jumping into the river. It is argued that the basic movement of a prohibition is fear and that of a positive commandment is love, even if one who serves out of love fulfills both positive commandments and prohibitions.
A positive commandment overrides a prohibition, “new grain” and matzah, and the asymmetry of zero
An example is brought of eating matzah when there is only grain from the new crop, and the rule that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition allows one to fulfill matzah even though there is a prohibition of new grain. A calculation is presented that seems at first glance to produce a tie between “a great positive and a great negative” and “a small negative and a small positive,” but then it is argued that the calculation was misleading because refraining from a prohibition is not a “small positive” but zero. It is argued that neglecting a positive commandment is a small negative, avoiding a prohibition is zero, and violating a prohibition is a great negative, and in that way the hierarchy is preserved that allows the law of a positive commandment overriding a prohibition. It is argued that in halakhic terms, “a transgression came to his hand and he did not commit it” does not create positive value but only a zero state, although there may still be reward for effort or motivation.
Monetary expenditure, punishment, and uprooting a Torah law
It is argued that the distinction between a positive state and a negative state explains why for a prohibition one must spend all one’s assets to avoid failure, because the demand not to enter a negative state is a basic demand with no compromise. By contrast, to attain the positive state of righteousness one is not obligated to spend all one’s assets, only up to one-fifth. It is argued that the distinction explains why there is punishment for a prohibition and not for a positive commandment, and why a positive commandment overrides a prohibition, all deriving from the difference between “do not be in a negative state” and “be in a positive state.” It is also argued that the Sages can uproot a Torah law only through passive omission, and this is linked to a fundamental distinction that will be clarified later as an abstraction.
The abstraction: positive action and passive omission as active or passive collision
It is argued that the operational approach is not nonsense but rests on a correct intuition, except that the terms positive action and passive omission need to undergo abstraction. The claim is that the severity of positive action as opposed to passive omission comes from active collision against the will of God as opposed to passive collision through not doing His will. Positive action is defined not as physical action per se but as frontal action against what God wants, while passive omission is defined not as mere physical inaction but as failure to enter the positive state. It is argued that this explains how an omission such as failure to rescue is in fact active collision with the will of God and is therefore defined as a prohibition, even though it is physically “passive.” The move is presented as an abstraction rather than a replacement: it is still correct to identify a positive commandment with positive action and a prohibition with passive omission, but in an abstract sense of activity and passivity relative to the will of God.
Shofar blasts, “do not add,” the Rashba, the Turei Even, and the Sages versus a prohibition
The Talmud in Rosh Hashanah about shofar blasts while seated and while standing is brought as an example of a rabbinic enactment of additional blasts in order to confuse the Satan. Tosafot struggle with the prohibition of “do not add” and suggest that there is no “do not add” when one performs the same commandment twice, like a priest who blesses and then blesses that same congregation again. The Rashba disagrees and argues that there is no “do not add” in what the Sages enacted for a purpose, by virtue of “according to the Torah that they shall instruct you,” and he brings proof from the eighth day of Sukkot nowadays, when one sleeps and eats in the sukkah as a commandment. The Turei Even challenges the Rashba and argues that his proofs are not conclusive, and raises the possibility of uprooting through passive omission. Then it is argued that the real point is that the Sages cannot uproot a prohibition at all, even if the uprooting appears “passive.” It is argued that the terminology of passive omission and positive action in this context does not refer to omission versus action but to positive commandment versus prohibition, and therefore the Sages can uproot a positive commandment but cannot uproot a prohibition. A possibility is raised that in the language of passive omission there remains a residue from the earlier operational period discussed by Aharon Shemesh.
Human dignity and two possible explanations of passive omission
The implication is brought that human dignity overrides only through passive omission and not through positive action. Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman is cited as offering the possibility that the Sages can create a tie between their value and the Torah’s command, and in a tie the ruling is passive omission. When the clash is with a Torah positive commandment, a tie leads to non-performance and thus to neglect of the positive commandment, and so a positive commandment can be uprooted. But when the clash is with a Torah prohibition, a tie also leads to non-performance, yet non-performance fulfills the prohibition, and therefore the prohibition is not overridden. The conclusion is that the ability to override “only through passive omission” stems from the structure of decision in a tie, and not necessarily from a different level of severity between positive action and passive omission. The text ends by saying that further implications and clarifications will be discussed later.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We are in… there are some new faces here who came in. We’re actually a bit in the middle, so I’ll try to give the framework before I continue. This series deals with abstractions, so I gave a bit of an introduction about what abstraction is בכלל, various logical definitions of this concept of abstraction, and then we started dealing with examples. And the example we’re dealing with now is the definition of positive commandments and prohibitions. And the basic difficulty here comes from the fact that when we examine what the definition of a positive commandment versus a prohibition is, if you ask an ordinary person on the street, he’ll tell you that a positive commandment is an instruction that expects you to do something, to perform some action, and a prohibition is an instruction that expects you to refrain, it commands an omission, not to do something. The prohibition against doing labor on the Sabbath means you’re supposed to refrain from labor, that is, not do something. The commandment to put on tefillin is a commandment to perform some action. So the basic assumption is that a positive commandment is fulfilled through positive action and neglected through passive omission, right? “Passive omission” is the halakhic term for inaction. And a prohibition is the opposite, meaning it is fulfilled through passive omission and violated through positive action. That’s basically the difference. In other words, the difference lies in the question of how the commandment is fulfilled as opposed to how it is violated. If it is fulfilled through positive action, then it is a positive commandment; if it is violated through positive action, then it is a prohibition. Clear? But this intuitive view is challenged by the facts. It just doesn’t stand the test of the facts. Because we know of various commandments that are defined as prohibitions, but they expect us to do something. For example, the commandment “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” which is a prohibition. But what does it impose on me? What obligation does it impose on me? It imposes an obligation to act. If I see someone drowning in a river, what I’m supposed to do is go and save him, meaning perform an act of rescue. If I don’t do that, then I have violated a prohibition. Right? I have to do something. How can a prohibition command me to act? A prohibition is supposed to expect omission from me, not action. And on the other side too, there are positive commandments that expect omission from me. For example, the commandment to rest on the Sabbath or to fast on Yom Kippur. Those are commandments… there are prohibitions there too, but there is also a positive commandment, and that positive commandment tells me not to eat on Yom Kippur or not to do labor on the Sabbath. So this is a positive commandment that imposes on me an obligation to refrain, not an obligation to act, but an obligation to refrain. So in what sense is that a positive commandment? And in what sense is the prohibition “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” a prohibition, while the commandment of rest on the Sabbath is a positive commandment? That was basically the question. I said that Aharon Shemesh, the Talmud scholar from Bar-Ilan, who died young, yes, some time ago, once wrote an article about this in Tarbiz, and there he argues that in the earlier generations… in the earlier discussions, the earlier sages in the Talmudic period, in the Talmudic corpus, the earlier discussions really define things operationally. Meaning, positive commandments and prohibitions are defined according to the way we fulfill or violate them. But as the generations go on, the definition starts becoming what he called linguistic. Meaning, the definition of a positive commandment and a prohibition is not determined by whether it imposes action on me or imposes on me an obligation to refrain, but rather by the way the Torah formulates it. So for example, “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” is a command that tells me to do something, so apparently it should be a positive commandment, but the Torah’s wording is like a prohibition: “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” right? So because the wording is passive, negative, wording that tells you not to do something, it is defined as a prohibition, even though that’s only the wording, because in practice the commandment imposes action on me. The same with Sabbath rest, the opposite side. Sabbath rest: the commandment is “on the seventh day you shall rest,” “six days you shall labor, and on the seventh day you shall rest.” The commandment is worded as a positive commandment, action, meaning to do something, to rest. But not… there isn’t the word “not” there. After all, the Talmud says that in order to define something as a prohibition, you always need “beware,” “lest,” “do not,” and “not”—you need some negative marker in order to define an instruction as a prohibition. That isn’t there in “on the seventh day you shall rest.” But the obligation to rest really means not to do labor. So this is a positive commandment that imposes on me an obligation to refrain, not an obligation to act. Why is it defined as a positive commandment? Nachmanides says: because of the Torah’s wording. True, on the operational, practical level, it really imposes on me an obligation to refrain, but in the Torah’s wording it is an active formulation, a formulation that tells me to do something—to rest. It is not a formulation that forbids me something, that tells me not to do something. Therefore it is defined as a positive commandment. And then I said that it is hard to accept that distinction as the bottom line. In other words, that distinction is true on the level of translating the facts, but it is hard to accept it as the final word, because the Torah’s wording itself cannot be the ultimate point of departure. Because the question is: why did the Torah itself formulate the commandment this way? Why does the Torah formulate it as “and on the seventh day you shall rest” and not make do with “you shall not do any labor”?
[Speaker B] So…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There has to be some characteristic, or some particular kind of will of the Torah, that gets formulated in the language of a positive commandment, and that’s why this wording was chosen.
[Speaker B] Why does it matter?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why does it matter—
[Speaker B] whether it’s defined as a positive commandment or a prohibition?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So it has many implications. For example, first of all, a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. There are rules. For a positive commandment you have to spend up to one-fifth of your assets in order to fulfill it. For a prohibition you have to spend all your assets in order not to violate it. Human dignity overrides only commandments through passive omission, not through positive action—that is, only positive commandments and not prohibitions. There are various definitions: the Sages uproot a Torah law only through passive omission, not through positive action—that is, they can cancel a positive commandment, but they cannot uproot or permit a prohibition. There are many implications. But those are implications, and I said this last time: when I asked several questions of this sort, I often got an answer through the implications. Fine, what’s the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition? That for this one there is no punishment and for that one there is. A positive commandment has no punishment; a prohibition has punishment. Or one-fifth of your assets versus all your assets, all the distinctions I mentioned before. And that of course is not an answer. All of those are implications of the difference. I’m asking what the difference is. Why is there punishment here and not there? The fact that you understand the halakhic implications is not a substitute for the question of what the actual difference is. There has to be some difference that gives rise to all these halakhic implications. The reason why with a positive commandment there is no punishment and with a prohibition there is punishment. The reason why for a positive commandment you need spend only up to one-fifth of your money in order not to fail, while for a prohibition you need to spend all your money. The reason why the Sages can uproot a Torah law regarding a positive commandment but not regarding a prohibition. In other words, all these are implications of a difference. I’m asking: what is the difference? What defines a commandment as being a positive commandment or a prohibition? What does the Torah really mean? What is the difference between when the Torah tells me to rest on the Sabbath and when it tells me not to do labor on the Sabbath? It’s telling me the same thing, once in passive wording and once in active wording. What difference does it make? Why did it choose one formulation rather than the other? Apparently there is some consideration behind it, some specific distinction. We asked what that distinction is.
[Speaker B] After all, there are commandments—for example, “distance yourself from falsehood”—which on the one hand sounds…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But on the other hand—
[Speaker B] there is “do not lie,” which is a prohibition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, that’s a prohibition and that’s not a positive commandment because they don’t count it, but the wording of the first is prohibition language and the second is positive language. Okay. There’s also the dilemma of looking and not looking in places… In any case, the question is what stands behind the definition of a positive commandment and a prohibition, where one indication that we’ve explained it correctly would be if we succeed in understanding the halakhic implications of that difference. If it explains all the halakhic implications I brought, that’s an indication that this is the right distinction. So I said that in the end, the bottom line—and this is what I said—I think the difference lies in the question of what exactly the Torah is trying to tell me.
[Speaker D] Positive commandments—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A positive commandment is a commandment in which the Torah points to a positive state. For example, when the Torah tells me to put on tefillin, then the Torah is saying that a state in which you are wearing tefillin is a positive state. To be without tefillin is not to be in the positive state that the Torah wants me to be in. If the Torah had forbidden me to be without tefillin, then that would be pointing to a negative state—that would be a prohibition. A prohibition points to a negative state. What does that mean? It tells me that being without tefillin… and then if I am wearing tefillin, I am not in a positive state, I have only avoided being in the negative state. That’s the difference. I’m proposing this: the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition lies in whether the Torah points to a positive state—that’s a positive commandment—or whether it points to a negative state—and then it’s a prohibition. Now notice that this does not overlap with the expressive distinction. For example, when the Torah says to rest on the Sabbath or to fast on Yom Kippur. On the expressive level, the Torah is basically telling me to refrain from something, not to do, right? Why is that a positive commandment? I asked. And the answer is simple. The Torah tells me to refrain from labor not because doing labor is negative, but because resting is a positive state. In order to say that, the Torah has to formulate it in the language of a positive commandment. Because if it only said not to do labor, I would understand that doing labor is something negative, but Sabbath rest as such would be merely avoiding being in the negative state. So that’s why the Torah chooses the active formulation, the formulation of a positive commandment. Because it wants to point to a positive state. That positive state can be a state in which I do something, but it can also be a state in which I don’t do something—for example, resting on the Sabbath. Sabbath rest, the positive state, is a state in which I refrain and do not act. But the state in which I refrain is a positive state; it’s not that the state in which I act is negative. Therefore it is a positive commandment. The same with “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.” The Torah says “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” so it is telling me not that rescue is the positive state. Here, halakhically, maybe rescue is the positive state, but the definition is halakhic. Not that rescue is the positive state, but that one who refrains from rescuing is a negative person, he is in a negative state. And the Torah tells me: don’t be in that negative state. And in order not to be in that negative state I have to perform an action and rescue, but not because that action has value—there’s no value in the action as such—but because doing that action means not being in the state in which I don’t act. So I’m really supposed to do it not because I’m obligated to perform the action, but because I’m forbidden to be in the state of no action. That is basically the definition of the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition. Now I want to demonstrate—up to here is more or less where we got to last time—at the two extremes. Right. There is a situation where often this is true. With “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” for example. So there are prohibitions that basically expect action from me—to rescue, right? There are places where there are positive commandments that expect me to refrain—to fast on Yom Kippur. It’s clear whether there’s also a prohibition there or not; the medieval authorities (Rishonim) say there is, but that’s not necessary. But there are places where it is clear that there is both a prohibition and a positive commandment, like on the Sabbath. There is both a prohibition and a positive commandment: there is a commandment to rest and a prohibition against doing labor. What does that mean? Why do we need both? The commandment to rest says that resting is a positive state. The prohibition against doing labor says that doing labor is a negative state. And on the Sabbath both sides are true. So on the Sabbath, doing labor is a negative thing, and resting from labor is not only avoiding a negative state, it also has positive value. Therefore the Torah has to tell me both the positive commandment and the prohibition. And that explains why Maimonides writes in the sixth root—and I mentioned this in the previous lecture—that when there is a positive commandment and a prohibition with overlapping content, as on the Sabbath, then we do not apply the rule of the ninth root that we don’t count it as two commandments because it’s basically overlapping. When the Torah commands us several times to keep the Sabbath, we do not count it several times; we count one commandment. It doesn’t matter that it repeats it several times, but it’s one commandment. But if it appears once in the form of a prohibition and once in the form of a positive commandment, then it is counted as two commandments and not one, because it is different content.
[Speaker B] Exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now according to what we’ve said, it is different content, and that’s why it is counted as two commandments. On the face of it, it looks like the same thing, but only on the face of it. In fact it is different content. Different content because here I’m being told: be in a positive state, and there I’m being told: do not be in a negative state. Let me illustrate the difference a bit. What would happen, for example—or maybe before that, another example of a context in which there is both a positive commandment and a prohibition is a parapet on a house. The commandment of parapet is the commandment to build a parapet on one’s house to prevent hazards so people won’t fall and there won’t be a dangerous situation. The prohibition is “do not place blood in your house.”
[Speaker B] That’s the prohibition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that means there is a positive commandment and there is a prohibition. What’s the difference between them? The positive commandment to make a parapet says that making the parapet is a positive state. The prohibition says that a house without a parapet is a negative state. And both are there. Now what if, say, there were only the commandment to build a parapet? As opposed to only the prohibition, “do not place blood in your house,” the prohibition concerning the state without a parapet. What would the halakhic difference be between those two? So let’s take, for example, someone who has no house at all.
[Speaker B] No house.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then clearly he has not violated the prohibition, right? He did not violate the prohibition. He didn’t build a parapet, and he did not violate the prohibition. He has no house—if he has no house, he doesn’t need to build a parapet. But on the other hand, clearly he did not fulfill the positive commandment. No one comes to him with claims, but he didn’t fulfill it. That is exactly the difference between the requirement to fulfill a positive commandment and the requirement not to violate a prohibition. When I have no house… there’s a famous example in analytic philosophy. They use the case where, say, you want to prove—you ask yourself whether the present king of France is hairy or bald. I’ve already mentioned this once, you remember? And you want to check: you examine the group of hairy people, you map all the people who have hair on their heads. You check there and you don’t find the present king of France. So apparently he’s bald, right? No. You check among the bald people too, and you won’t find him there either, and he isn’t there. How can that be? Either he’s hairy or he’s—
[Speaker D] Bald.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is no present king of France, right? At least not since the Revolution.
[Speaker D] Okay, how can you fulfill…? You have no house, no field, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In a situation where there is no present king of France, it is not true to say that either he is bald or he is hairy, such that if I proved he isn’t hairy then clearly he’s bald. Because there is a zero state: he is neither a hairy king nor a bald king. What is that state? That there is no king at all. All right? If there is no king at all, then that is a third state. It is not true that the world is divided into two possible states that are mutually exclusive and together cover everything—what’s called an exhaustive division. Either the present king of France is bald or he is hairy. No: there is also a third state, that there is no king at all. Okay, the same thing in the case of the parapet, what I said before. There is a situation where your house has a parapet, there is a situation where your house has no parapet, and there is also a situation where you have no house. And in that state there will be a difference. If you have a house, then apparently there will be no practical difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition, because at the end of the day, practically speaking, you need to build a parapet. You’re forbidden to sit in a house without a parapet. So that’s not where we’ll find the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition. Where will we find it? In the third state, the state where I have no house at all. Because from the perspective of the positive commandment, at the end of the day I did not fulfill a positive commandment, but from the perspective of the prohibition, it is not true that I violated a prohibition—not at all. Okay? It’s not that I didn’t incur punishment; I didn’t violate it at all. Not exemption from punishment—I did not nullify the prohibition, I did not violate this prohibition at all. By the way, one could discuss whether there is some point in pursuing, trying to obtain a house in order to fulfill the commandment of parapet. I don’t currently have a house; maybe in order to gain the commandment of parapet there is some point in trying to obtain a house?
[Speaker B] It’s like tzitzit.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who says? That’s the question—who says? First, who says that with tzitzit; second, even with tzitzit there is such an issue.
[Speaker B] If it’s—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If it’s the same thing, then it’s the same question.
[Speaker D] Yes. Okay, but I’m saying that to the same extent—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] extent—
[Speaker B] you could—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] say that you have a commandment that you should have a house and build a parapet on it.
[Speaker D] And if it’s a conditional commandment like tzitzit, then it’s the same question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why, maybe it isn’t the same thing? What? You can say that in the case of a parapet the definition is that you should have a house and put a parapet on it, not that if you have a house you should put a parapet on it.
[Speaker B] Theoretically it’s not a conditional commandment. It’s not likely, but theoretically it could be. What? The Torah itself formulates it—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and there it really is clearer. By the way, even there—the Satmar Rebbe, according to the Kabbalists, the Kabbalists go looking for a situation to perform the commandment of sending away the mother bird, even though the Torah explicitly says, “if a bird’s nest happens to be before you.” There, unlike tzitzit and unlike parapet, it explicitly says that this is a conditional commandment.
[Speaker B] When the Satmar Rebbe visited Israel, they looked for a bird’s nest for him so he could fulfill the commandment, and people criticized him and said you don’t have to chase after commandments.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s a question. It’s a dispute between the Kabbalists and the halakhic decisors who don’t incline after the esoteric side. So this already started long before him. In any case, the whole discussion in chavruta—those conversations were there. In any case, there is a Ran on Chullin, and among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and in the Talmudic texts they also said that this approach is simply utter nonsense. This thing got absorbed as another conception of the commandment of sending away the mother bird. In any case, for our purposes, this zero state—the state that is neither positive nor negative—is really the litmus test. All right? And one of the indications is whether I need to make an effort about it, to try to obtain a house in order to build a parapet on it, if I’m in the state of not having a house. With tzitzit, for example, the Talmud tells that Rav Kattina met Elijah the prophet and so on, and Elijah the prophet says that in a time of divine anger they punish someone who has no tzitzit on his garment—someone who does not have a four-cornered garment does not need tzitzit.
[Speaker B] Right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But in a time of divine anger they punish you if you don’t have a four-cornered garment. What does that mean? Even though it is a conditional commandment, if you don’t have the garment you’re not obligated—but if you have such a commandment, why aren’t you pursuing it? That’s what is expected of you in a time of divine anger: pursue it in order to gain another commandment. Apparently you don’t care about fulfilling commandments. So you didn’t neglect the positive commandment—nobody says you neglected the positive commandment—but there is some issue here of pursuing it. Obviously there is no issue of pursuing the avoidance of a prohibition. That’s irrelevant. If it were defined as a prohibition—“do not wear a four-cornered garment without tzitzit”—then clearly there would be no point at all in putting on a four-cornered garment and putting tzitzit on it in order not to be in the state of a four-cornered garment without tzitzit. Now, the question—what? So that is one practical implication. By the way, with tzitzit it’s not a simple question. Apparently this is how things stand in straightforward Jewish law: with tzitzit it is not as people usually think. Rather, with tzitzit, where the standard is to wear a four-cornered garment, and you deliberately put on a garment that is not four-cornered in order not to become obligated in tzitzit, then they punish you in a time of divine anger. But in our time, for example, nobody wears a four-cornered shirt; it’s the opposite—we buy a four-cornered garment only in order to become obligated in tzitzit. But a normal shirt is not a four-cornered shirt. In that situation, they would not punish even in a time of divine anger. It’s like—there’s just a regular shirt here. If that’s all, and I wear a regular shirt and I don’t put on—
[Speaker B] tzitzit—then there’s no problem at all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why do people wear it here? I don’t know, because that’s the custom, that’s what people are used to. The truth is there’s no reason for it; it’s simply completely illogical. Tosafot says this, there are many people who don’t say that, but I’m saying it’s a clear and obvious argument. But there is a dispute whether tzitzit is an obligation of the person or… What? After all, there is a dispute whether tzitzit is an obligation of the person or an obligation of the garment.
[Speaker B] What difference does it make? An obligation of the garment when you wear it. But an obligation of the person—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An obligation of the garment—
[Speaker B] only when you wear it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is no obligation of the garment in a box-like vessel. In any case, for our purposes, this zero state is really the state that can distinguish whether this is a positive commandment or a prohibition. Here’s maybe another example: suppose we are in a situation of doubt, okay? Or a situation of coercion. Okay? A situation of coercion. I’m under coercion, I can’t build a parapet on the roof; I have a house without a parapet, but I’m coerced, I can’t build the parapet. Okay? So here too there can be a difference between the positive commandment and the prohibition. Because with a prohibition, if you are coerced then you are exempt—exempt due to coercion. It’s as if you didn’t violate the prohibition. But clearly, with a positive commandment, even if you were coerced, you still didn’t fulfill it. And you do have a neglect of the positive commandment. Again, coercion may exempt from punishment, but you still have neglect of the positive commandment. What in the language of the Talmud they call… “The Merciful One exempted one who acted under coercion.” Regarding a positive commandment… it doesn’t say that coercion exempts.
[Speaker D] Right, I’m saying, it’s not that the coercion…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the language of the Talmud this is called “The Merciful One exempted one who acted under coercion.” Meaning, if someone commits a transgression under coercion, it’s as if he did not commit the transgression. But if someone did not perform a commandment because he was coerced, that’s not called that he performed the commandment. He didn’t perform the commandment; he’s just not at fault. But that’s not called that he performed the commandment. First of all, there is a dispute between Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish, but this is basically clear; it doesn’t prove it from here.
[Speaker B] But the very word coercion, by definition, is meant to exempt you from something. Yes, so as not to reach a situation where you would receive…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Notice that with regard to coercion, the positive commandment is more severe than the prohibition. With a positive commandment, if you are coerced, you have not fulfilled it, and you have neglect of a positive commandment. Okay, maybe you’re not at fault, but you still have neglect of a positive commandment. Okay? But with a prohibition, if you are coerced, nothing happened. You are exempt, everything is fine, it’s as if you didn’t violate it. And why is there this gap between the two? Where does this come from? I mentioned this once: ancient philosophers spoke about two kinds of logical negation. I mentioned this, if you remember. There is nullifying negation and opposing negation. In the sense that the opposite of one can be minus one, and it can also be zero. So what comes out is that the opposite of one—when you talk about the opposite of one—it can be zero and it can be minus one, depending on in what sense of “opposite,” in what sense you are using the term “opposite.” Hot and cold are opposites of the type of one and minus one. Light and darkness are opposites of the type of one and zero. Light and black are not. Why? Because light and darkness, if you mix them together, the result is light. If you mix light and darkness together, right? It’s like one and zero. If you add one and zero together, you remain with one. But if you mix cold and heat—hot water and cold water—mix them together and you get lukewarm. They neutralize each other. So that’s a mixture of the type of one and minus one. Those are opposing opposites, not nullifying opposites. Okay? What does that actually mean? When we speak about two opposite states, we really have to define very carefully what kind of opposite we are talking about. When I say that a positive commandment and a prohibition are opposite commands or opposing commands, the question is whether I mean opposition like one and zero, or opposition like one and minus one. And what I am claiming is: opposition like one and minus one. Therefore, the zero state always sits between them, and that is what defines the matter. Because a positive commandment tells you: be in state one, what we called the positive state. Right? If you did not fulfill the positive commandment, then here you are in the zero state. Correct? You did not violate the prohibition. And if you did violate the prohibition, then you are in the minus one state, not like neglect of a positive commandment. Okay? Therefore there is a difference between saying that there is a positive commandment to rest on the Sabbath, and then if you did labor on the Sabbath you are in the zero state because you were not in state one, versus saying that there is a prohibition against doing labor on the Sabbath, and you did labor on the Sabbath, in which case you are in the minus one state and not in the zero state. In a negative state. Or, as Yehudit said last time, the question is whether this repairs or does not damage. What are you being called upon to do? Are you being called upon to repair, in a positive commandment, or are you being called upon not to damage, in a prohibition?
[Speaker D] Okay? That’s exactly what we have here. Yes, because earlier you spoke about coercion. If the coercion is in a positive commandment, then supposedly you’re in the zero state. That’s not good—it’s under coercion, but it’s still the zero state. But if it’s in a prohibition, you said you’re exempt, it’s as if you did nothing. But why are you exempt? Does that mean exempt from punishment? Exempt from punishment, but it’s more than that—at least according to certain views, it’s as if you did nothing. Ah, so it’s not… But when you say exempt, you could mean exempt from punishment. What? When you say exempt under coercion in the case of a prohibition, that basically means exempt from punishment. Exempt means exempt from punishment, but with coercion there are many views that say: why am I exempt from punishment? I’m exempt from punishment not only because there is no culpability; I’m exempt from punishment because I did not commit the transgression. Meaning, you did not do a negative act.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] By contrast, with a positive commandment, if I am coerced, nobody says that this counts as though I performed the positive commandment. Obviously not. Not at fault—the lack of responsibility is here too, that’s clear. I’m not responsible for not having done it, but I didn’t do it. Coercion is like not acting—that, yes. But coercion is not like having acted. We do not say that coercion is as if you did something if you didn’t do it—if you failed to do it under coercion. But if you did something—if you violated a prohibition under coercion—then it is as though you did not act. It’s as if you did not do it. “Coercion is as though one did not act” is accepted by everyone. “Coercion is as though one did act” is a dispute. And the Jewish law is that coercion is as though one did not act.
[Speaker C] Here’s the case of Abaye and Rava about a kohen—I don’t remember which prohibition it was—how would the Rabbi explain that in terms of neglect of a positive commandment?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A kohen who neglected a positive commandment—what do you mean?
[Speaker C] Wouldn’t that be minus one?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, zero. I’ll get to that in a moment. The difference between an obligatory commandment and an existential commandment is connected somewhat to this.
[Speaker B] I’ll come back to this. Why, legally speaking, is the instruction in the case of a prohibition under coercion: you did the prohibited act, but they exempt you from punishment because what you did, you did under coercion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How do you understand a prohibition as a physical action? I did the physical action, right? True, I was coerced, but I did it. And that’s exactly what I’m saying. The transgression is not the physical action. Because the criterion I’m talking about is not the practical-performance criterion between a positive commandment and a prohibition; that’s the old view. According to that view, the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition is a practical criterion. And according to that view, if you really violated a prohibition under coercion, then you did violate the prohibition, you’re just not guilty. But according to the substantive criterion, not the practical one, the state of a prohibition is being in a negative state. If you did it under coercion, then you’re not in the negative state. You did physically perform the transgression, but that’s not called being in the negative state. So it turns out that it’s as if you didn’t violate the prohibition at all, not just that you’re exempt from punishment.
I mentioned last time as well the argument I once had with Alona Eilat and Dr. Avi Eitam about… I argued that in law there are no positive commandments, that in law there are no positive commandments at all, only prohibitions. In all legal systems in the world. In Jewish law there are positive commandments and prohibitions, but in civil law there are only prohibitions. She said to me, what do you mean? There’s paying taxes or military service or things like that. What I said is still correct: those are prohibitions. There are no positive commandments, because in the end there’s a sanction attached. A positive commandment has no punishment; if you didn’t do the positive act, then you’re not righteous, but there’s no punishment. Punishment is for someone wicked. Someone who evades taxes is viewed by the law as wicked, and someone who dodges service is wicked, and he’ll be punished, and that’s a negative state. It’s just a negative state that, in order to escape it, you have to do something. And that parallels “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” where too it’s a prohibition that, in order not to fail in it, you have to act.
Now, someone who goes with the practical criterion will obviously define this as a positive commandment. But in the halakhic definition, which in the end is not practical, that is a prohibition. By that definition, there are no positive commandments in law. The law doesn’t reward someone who pays taxes or serves in the army. There is no reward in law; there is only punishment for someone who doesn’t do it. Right? So that’s a prohibition in the halakhic definition. Therefore, even though someone who pays taxes is looked at and people say, okay, he’s a law-abiding citizen — fine, that’s in the public sphere — but in the law itself there’s nothing to say about it. From the legal standpoint, the citizen simply fulfilled his obligation; he’s totally neutral. The law doesn’t see him, there’s no such thing in law as a positive appraisal. There is no positive appraisal; there’s a zero appraisal — that’s the normative citizen — and a negative appraisal, for someone who deserves punishment. Those are the two states. In law there is no plus one; there’s either zero or minus one. And in Jewish law there are all three states: plus one, zero, and minus one.
Now, by the practical criterion there’s no difference between Jewish law and civil law. By the practical criterion, there are commands that tell you “do,” and commands that tell you “refrain.” That exists both in Jewish law and in civil law. If that’s the definition that distinguishes between a positive commandment and a prohibition, then it exists in both. But if the criterion is a substantive one, not a practical one, then civil law doesn’t have that.
If someone was forced to eat matzah, did he fulfill his obligation? What, again? Someone who was forced? No — punishment to carry out the act, not punishment for not carrying out the act. It’s like someone who was forced not to eat pork. Fine, obviously. It could be — “the Persians forced him to eat matzah,” the Talmud in Rosh Hashanah. And there, because commandments may require intention, you may have a problem, but on the level of fulfillment itself — let’s put the question of intention aside for a moment — then obviously he fulfilled it; he ate matzah. It’s that technical. I’m always talking about punishment that tells you to violate the Jewish law, not punishment that tells you to fulfill the Jewish law. How to violate? Either by neglecting a positive commandment or by violating a prohibition.
By the way — here, a side point — isn’t the liability of karet also considered a sanction? What, again? For example, liability of karet in the commandment of the Passover offering, circumcision, and also circumcision and Yom Kippur. That would come up under your definition. No, that’s not a prohibition; that’s a positive commandment. It’s a positive commandment that carries karet. Usually you’re not punished for a positive commandment, but there are positive commandments for which the punishment is karet. Not by a religious court, but karet. So how is that different from paying taxes? How is it different? What, again? Different from paying taxes — in what way is it different? It’s different because this is neglect of a positive commandment, whereas there it’s a prohibition. In a moment — this goes back to the same question. It’s a positive existential commandment and a positive active commandment; I’ll get to that. Positive existential and positive active.
So is that basically considered the difference between positive commandments and prohibitions? Maybe I’ll illustrate it on the logical level. Okay, we have some conception here: we asked the question, and basically we assumed that the following two formulations are equivalent. If the Torah were to say to me, “Put on tefillin,” that would be equivalent to saying, “I do not want you not to put on tefillin.” Right? That’s a prohibition and a positive commandment with the same content. Basically both commands expect me to put on tefillin. One just says, “Put them on,” and the other says, “I don’t want you not to put them on.” And I assumed they were equivalent formulations.
Now, someone with even a little logical sensitivity understands that they’re not equivalent. They are not logically equivalent. Because to say — for example, when I say “I want you to put on tefillin,” okay, what is the negation of that? “I want you not to put on tefillin”? No. “It is not true that I want you to put on tefillin” — that’s the negation. What’s the difference between that and “I want you not to put them on”? Exactly the difference I mentioned earlier. “I want you not to put them on” means I require you to be in a state of not putting them on. “I don’t want you to put them on” means I require you not to be in a state of putting them on. That’s a positive commandment and a prohibition. Right? They are not saying the same thing, it’s not the same thing. And therefore, if you negate them again, you won’t arrive at the same thing; only by a double negation do you get back to the same place. In other words, you can’t switch the place of “want” and the negation. These two operators are not commutative.
Meaning, if I say: I want to do X, okay? I want to do not-X. I do not want to do not-X. Apparently that’s a double negation, so it should return me to wanting to do X, right? Plus-minus. But that’s not true, because there’s a “want” in the middle. If I said “want not not to do X,” then yes, that’s equivalent to wanting to do X. But when the “not” appears before the “want,” you can’t switch their positions — the “not” and the “want.”
Maybe I’ll give you another example that will be clearer, from quantifiers. In logic there’s a concept of quantifiers. You know the liar paradox? The liar paradox originates in the New Testament. There’s a sentence there said by a Cretan resident; he says, “All Cretans are liars.” And he himself is a liar. So apparently he too is a liar. And if he’s a liar, then it isn’t true that all Cretans are liars, so he’s telling the truth. And if he’s telling the truth, then they are liars, so he’s a liar — and it goes in circles, right?
But no, it’s not a circle. That’s a mistake. There’s no paradox here at all. Why? The man says, “All Cretans are liars,” right? So he too is a liar, because he’s one of the Cretans. What does it mean that he’s a liar? That the sentence “All Cretans are liars” is false. But that does not mean that everyone — what does it mean that it’s false? Does it mean they’re all truth-tellers? No. It means not all of them are liars. That there is at least one who tells the truth. Not him — his cousin. He remains a liar. And that solves it. Why? If he’s the liar and his cousin…
There’s also what you said earlier. There’s “I want to do X.” And there are three things here. One is “I want to do X.” One is “I want to do not-X.” One is “I want not to do X.” One is “I do not want to do X.” And there’s also “it is not true…” No, you’re also bringing in the “doing.” That adds more. Yes, yes — once you add that too, then there are even more. There are more than three states, obviously. I’m currently assuming there’s no verb “to do,” only the “want.” Fine.
In any case, I’m saying: “I want X,” “I want not-X,” or “I do not want X,” okay? Or “I do not want not-X,” without the “doing.” Okay? A state. And when I spoke about a state, I don’t care whether that state is a state of action or a state of refraining. Because from our standpoint, we said that the practical plane plays no role. So I don’t care whether the X that I want is an X bound up with acting or an X bound up with refraining. It’s a state X. And therefore the action here isn’t important for the map I’m drawing.
So basically the claim is exactly what I’m saying: we have this feeling that a prohibition is the opposite of a positive commandment. No, it’s not the opposite of a positive commandment. There is a zero state between them. It’s not the opposite of a positive commandment; these are two worlds that don’t speak to each other. Two completely different things. “I do not want you to do X” and “I do not want you to do not-X” are both prohibitions. “I want you to do X” and “I want you to do not-X” are both positive commandments. And none of them is equivalent to the other; these are four different states. This is a positive commandment that requires action, this is a positive commandment that requires refraining, a prohibition on action, and a prohibition on refraining. These are four states, none of which is equivalent to any other. Okay? Two of them are positive commandments and two are prohibitions, and the difference is not action versus refraining, as people initially think, but whether you want something or do not want something. That is basically whether you are in a positive state or in a state that points to a positive state or points to a negative state.
Now, I want to show you — I think these ideas are written, in one form or another, in Nachmanides. Nachmanides on the Torah portion of Yitro, on the Ten Commandments, on the commandment of the Sabbath, discusses there the relationship between positive commandment and prohibition, between “remember” and “observe” on the two tablets. There’s a positive commandment and a prohibition; we talked about this. So Nachmanides says as follows: “And indeed this too is so, for the attribute of ‘remember’ is hinted at in positive commandments.” It says, “Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it” — that’s a positive commandment. “Observe the Sabbath day to sanctify it” is like “beware,” “beware lest” and “do not”; “observe” is a prohibition and “remember” is a positive commandment. “The attribute of ‘remember’ is hinted at in positive commandments, and it emerges from the attribute of love and belongs to the attribute of mercy, because one who performs the commandments of his Master is beloved to Him, and his Master has mercy on him.” Meaning, you love the Master, and therefore you do what He tells you. That’s the meaning of a positive commandment. “And the attribute of ‘observe’ is in prohibitions, and it belongs to the attribute of judgment and emerges from the attribute of fear, because one who guards himself from doing what is evil in the eyes of his Master fears Him.” You don’t do things He forbids, but you don’t necessarily do things He wants you to do. But if you love someone, then you also do the things he wants you to do. You don’t only avoid what he warns you against, right?
So he is pouring more content into the distinction I made between prohibition and positive commandment. That’s exactly the distinction I was talking about. It has nothing to do with whether you perform an action or refrain, right? It has nothing to do with that question. The question is what mental state, what inner state, accompanies the fulfillment or the transgression. Are you motivated by love of the Holy One, blessed be He, and therefore you do what He wants you to do? If you’re motivated by fear of the Holy One, blessed be He, then you are only careful not to do what He warned against.
Isn’t there something parallel to mercy on the boss’s side? Right? He puts mercy on the side of the positive commandment. Is there something parallel on the other side? Fear versus love, and mercy versus some kind of judgment. Meaning mercy and kindness versus judgment. He doesn’t write that, but that would be the parallel. In any case, now he continues: “And therefore a positive commandment is greater than a prohibition, just as love is greater than fear. For one who fulfills and does the will of his Master with his body and his wealth is greater than one who merely guards himself from doing what is evil in His eyes.” Because if you do what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants, then you are greater than if you merely refrain from doing what He hates. You’ve reached more; it’s a sign you love, exactly. You are greater. “And therefore they said: a positive commandment comes and overrides a prohibition.” Therefore a positive commandment overrides a prohibition because the positive commandment is greater. Fine?
And because of this, Nachmanides continues, “the punishment for prohibitions is greater, and justice is carried out in them, such as lashes and death,” because there is punishment for prohibitions. “And justice is not carried out at all for positive commandments, except in the case of rebels,” because if someone rebels — as in, “I’m not doing lulav and tzitzit” — then they lash him, but that’s not punishment, it’s only to force him to do it. Fine? So he says there is no punishment for positive commandments; that’s why there is punishment for prohibitions and not for positive commandments.
What is this “therefore”? You said the positive commandment is greater than the prohibition. So what is this “therefore”? Okay, I understood: the positive commandment is greater than the prohibition, therefore a positive commandment overrides a prohibition — I got that. But here you’re now bringing the opposite implication. A positive commandment is not punished and a prohibition is. Why “therefore”? That seems contradictory. You told me that the positive commandment is greater.
On this the Sdei Chemed explains. The Sdei Chemed says that with positive commandments the question is whether you compare fulfillment or neglect. Fulfilling a positive commandment is much more significant than refraining from a prohibition. Right? Refraining from a prohibition is the zero state; fulfilling a positive commandment is the one state. It is higher to fulfill a positive commandment than merely to refrain from a prohibition. Love is preferable to fear. Right? Someone who serves out of love and fulfills God’s will is better than someone who merely refrains from doing what the Holy One, blessed be He, forbids. Okay? But on the flip side, on the side of neglect, someone who violates a prohibition — that is much more severe than someone who neglects a positive commandment. No contradiction at all. Two sides of the same coin.
Because the positive commandment is higher — let’s call it more important — then neglecting it is more minor. Because neglecting it means simply being in the zero state. But neglect of a prohibition means being in the minus-one state; that’s more severe. From the negative perspective, neglect of a prohibition is much worse than neglect of a positive commandment. From the positive perspective, fulfillment of a positive commandment is more significant than refraining from a prohibition.
So then the next question is: first of all, it’s now clear what Nachmanides is saying, and he’s right that it is a “therefore.” Because the positive commandment is greater than the prohibition, therefore there is punishment for the prohibition. You said what? The prohibition is less severe, so why is there punishment for it? No — precisely because the positive commandment is greater than the prohibition, violating the prohibition is more severe than neglecting a positive commandment. If you don’t do heroic deeds, that doesn’t make you wicked. It just means you’re not especially praiseworthy. You’re not a heroic giant, but you’re not wicked. But if you don’t do minor things, then you are wicked.
Suppose — who is greater? Someone who jumps into a raging river to save a person who is about to drown there, risks his life, and saves him, or someone who throws him a stick and pulls him out? Obviously the first one is greater, right? Now I ask: who is worse? Someone who has a stick there and doesn’t extend it, or someone who doesn’t jump into the raging river? Obviously the one who has the stick and doesn’t extend it. That’s a minor act. If you don’t even do that, you’re worse than someone who refrains from jumping into a raging river. Refraining from jumping into a raging river — okay, he’s not a heroic giant, but you can understand it; he’s not wicked. He can’t, he’s not prepared to take the risk. Legitimate, or at least reasonable. Okay?
This comes out of the assumption that someone who is careful not to violate a prohibition is doing it specifically out of fear. But maybe he’s doing it out of love of God — God wants me not to be in this state, and I’m acting out of good will, not out of fear. That’s a completely correct remark, but I think what Nachmanides really means is that the movement of prohibitions is a movement of fear. Suppose I love you — then obviously I’ll both do what you want and avoid harming you, of course. But if I fear you, then I will only avoid what you warn against; I won’t do what you want. I don’t love you — why do I care whether you’re pleased? I’ll just make sure not to fail in what you warn me against. So Nachmanides doesn’t mean that someone who loves performs only positive commandments and isn’t careful about prohibitions; obviously not. But the movement of being careful about prohibitions, at its root, is a movement of fear. And the movement of performing positive commandments is a movement of love. That’s the advantage. And therefore it is greater on the side of fulfillment, and more severe on the side of neglect.
So now we understand why there is punishment for prohibitions and not for positive commandments. By the way, that’s one of the implications. I asked what the difference is between a positive commandment and a prohibition, and people always gave me an answer in terms of implications: for a prohibition there is punishment, for a positive commandment there isn’t. I said, that’s an implication — but I’m asking why. What is the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition such that one is punished and the other is not? Now we understand why. Here, I’m showing you that the halakhic differences really do derive from a distinction, from the same principled theoretical distinction I made here. Obviously, if you do a negative act, you deserve punishment. If you don’t do a positive act, you don’t deserve punishment. I’m setting karet aside for the moment; we’ll get to that soon enough.
A positive commandment overrides a prohibition because it is, as it were, for our benefit. A positive commandment overrides a prohibition because acting out of love is stronger. Let me formulate it better — look. At first what Nachmanides said seemed self-evident: therefore a positive commandment overrides a prohibition because a positive commandment is more severe, more important, than a prohibition. Fine. The question was how he then says that there is punishment for a prohibition and not for a positive commandment. Now after I explained, it flips exactly the other way. Punishment for the prohibition and no punishment for the positive commandment is now self-evident, obvious. So why does a positive commandment override a prohibition? Because what Nachmanides is really saying is that there is a kind of anti-equation here, right? The higher thing, the more significant thing — doing it is more positive than refraining from the smaller thing, right? But violating the smaller thing is more severe than not doing the great significant thing.
Okay, so now let’s think about a case where a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. Suppose we need to eat matzah and all we have is grain from the new crop. Matzah, as we know, is a commandment to eat on Passover, and the new crop is only permitted the next day, right? So I still can’t eat matzah from the new crop. I have no other matzah, no other grain, only grain from the new crop. So the question is: how can I fulfill the commandment of matzah? The rule is that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. So the rule is that I can fulfill the commandment using grain from the new crop, flour from the new crop. Because the positive commandment — fulfilling the commandment of eating matzah — overrides the transgression of the prohibition of the new crop.
Okay, now let’s see how this works in Nachmanides’ arithmetic. I’m torn between two options: either eat matzah made from the new crop, or don’t eat matzah. Right? Those are the two options. Now let’s see which is worth more. You’ll see that it apparently remains a tie. Because eating matzah from the new crop means violating the prohibition, which is something very negative, but also fulfilling the positive commandment, which is something very positive. Right? So very positive and very negative — let’s say they cancel each other out, for the sake of discussion, to zero. Not doing anything: then did I violate the positive commandment? I did — that gives me a small negative value. But I also didn’t violate the prohibition. So here I have violation of the positive commandment, which is a small negative, and fulfillment of the prohibition — no, keeping away from the prohibition — which would seem to be a small positive. So here I have a big negative and a big positive; there I have a small negative and a small positive. They both cancel out to the same place. So how does Nachmanides conclude from the fact that the positive commandment is more important that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition? In terms of the calculation of what’s better to do, it comes out equal.
The answer seems to be that I cheated a little in the calculation I made. Because fulfilling a positive commandment is a major positive, right? Neglecting a positive commandment is a small negative. And for a prohibition, violating it is a major negative; refraining from it is zero. Not a small positive — zero. Right? That’s exactly what we said: you didn’t do anything positive, you merely refrained. You are in the zero state. So not entering a negative state is zero. Therefore there is no cancellation.
Is refraining from a positive state also zero? No, why? Because there are active positive commandments, so if you refrain from them… Positive commandments — there are active positive commandments. There are no existential prohibitions. There are active positive commandments. There is an asymmetry between prohibitions and positive commandments. Okay, the calculation really goes like this: if I eat the matzah, then I have a major positive and a major negative, right? A major negative because I violated the prohibition of the new crop, and a major positive because I fulfilled the positive commandment of matzah. If I don’t eat, then I have a small negative, namely neglect of the positive commandment of eating matzah, and I have zero, because I didn’t violate the prohibition of the new crop. So I’m left with a small minus. Therefore the latter option is not preferable. That’s Nachmanides’ point.
So why did you say you cheated? What? I cheated because I said that not violating a prohibition is a small positive. No, it’s not a small positive — it’s zero. It’s not symmetrical with what exists on the positive side. Okay? That’s why Nachmanides writes it this way here.
But I still don’t understand why not fulfilling a positive commandment is negative. Fine. We’re back to the same question everyone asks. In a moment, in a moment, I’ll get there. First of all, factually this is certainly the case. Meaning, if there is an active positive commandment and you do not fulfill it, you committed a transgression. It’s negative, less severe than violating a prohibition, but still a transgression. But someone who upheld a prohibition receives no reward; he didn’t do a commandment. He just didn’t commit a transgression. That’s all. “Someone to whom a transgression came and he did not commit it” — they say… I don’t know exactly what that statement means, but even if we assume it’s true, obviously it’s not on the halakhic plane. On the halakhic plane there is nothing. Reward in heaven? No, but you also get reward for moral acts that aren’t connected to Jewish law. You get reward for motivation. But when you make the halakhic evaluation of this move, then its value is zero. From the halakhic standpoint, you didn’t commit a transgression and you didn’t do a commandment, you did nothing, simply zero. It may be that it was hard for you to remain in the zero state, because the temptation came — and you get reward for the fact that you guarded yourself and stayed at zero instead of deteriorating, because the Holy One, blessed be He, appreciates that. But from the standpoint of halakhic judgment, the value is zero. Okay?
Can’t one say from another point of view that really Jewish law is for our benefit in this respect — that if there is a positive commandment and a prohibition, the positive commandment prevails because…? Why for our benefit? The prohibition is more significant and the positive commandment benefits us. Why for our benefit? The prohibition is, on the contrary, the stronger thing. Exactly because of that. It’s stronger only in terms of refraining from violating it, but it’s not stronger in absolute value than violating it. Violating a prohibition is very negative. And fulfilling a positive commandment is very positive.
If I now want to summarize this section for a moment and say that basically all the implications I spoke about earlier can now be understood in light of the distinction I made between prohibition and positive commandment — then here already in Nachmanides we saw why there is punishment for a prohibition and not for a positive commandment. That follows naturally from the distinction I made. We also saw why a positive commandment overrides a prohibition; we saw that too. Right? Another difference is why for a positive commandment I only need to spend up to one-fifth of my wealth in order to fulfill it, whereas for a prohibition I have to spend all my wealth in order not to fail in it. Usually people explain that because doing something actively is more severe than… but that’s not right. There are prohibitions that are violated by passive omission. It has nothing to do with action. Those standard explanations don’t hold up.
Why is that true? Because in order not to enter a negative state, you must invest your whole “might” — “your might” here literally means money, to really push hard. But you have to invest everything you have in order not to enter a negative state, right? Because a negative state is a state in which you simply must not be. But in order to reach the positive state of being righteous, you don’t have to spend all your wealth. Desirable, nice, beautiful — yes. But you are not required to spend all your wealth in order to be righteous. The demand not to be wicked is an elementary demand. On that there are no compromises; you spend all your wealth. Fine? It’s clear that this follows naturally from this distinction between prohibition and positive commandment.
Same thing with why the Sages say that they can uproot a matter from the Torah only by passive omission and not by positive action, for example. Fine, that in a moment; I’m leaving that after one more little introduction. So those are the implications. Now I want to get to the move I really had in mind all along, and that is the question of abstraction. After all, our topic is abstraction. Up to now I was only giving introductions in order to show how one sees a process of abstraction here. What I want to claim is that behind this distinction there really stands an extension of the distinction between positive action and passive omission. I claim that the practical view is not nonsense. It’s not correct, as I showed earlier, but it’s not nonsense. It rests on a correct intuition. In principle, positive commandments are always fulfilled through positive action, and prohibitions are always fulfilled through passive omission — and the reverse with regard to transgression. The terms “passive omission” and “positive action” need to undergo abstraction. That’s the point I wanted to focus on.
What do I mean? Let me ask you: why is it always said that it’s more severe to commit a transgression by positive action than by passive omission? Why is that more severe? What? You do it with your own hands. And what? You do it with your own hands. And what? It’s creating something from nothing. And from something. I’m sitting on the chair and through that I commit the transgression. I actively created the negative state of the transgression. And here I remained in a negative state — even though it’s negative, I could have gotten out of it. Why isn’t that more severe? I was in a negative state and stayed in a negative state — what difference does it make?
I think what lies behind this is the question whether you are acting actively against God’s will or passively. Are you simply not doing God’s will? Are you doing what God does not want, or are you not doing what He does want? But if that is the underlying intuition, then the correct definition is not the practical definition of positive action versus passive omission at all. Rather, the definition is between neglect of a positive commandment and violation of a prohibition. Exactly — in the opposite direction. Therefore I claim that, for example, if I have a positive commandment to build a guardrail — “you shall make a parapet for your roof,” yes? When I don’t… that’s a simple positive commandment. Conversely, “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” or “you shall rest” — the positive commandment of rest. My claim is that when I do labor, okay — why is that less severe than if there were a prohibition against doing labor? Because when I do labor, I haven’t done something negative, right? I merely failed to be in the positive state. Rest is the positive state. Right? So in fact I didn’t do something by positive action. To do something by positive action means to act head-on against what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants. That is the activity of positive action.
But now I’m not translating this into the practical language of whether I perform an act or not. Rather, I’m translating it into the question of what kind of clash there is between what I do or don’t do and God’s will. If the clash is frontal, then it’s called transgression by positive action. If the clash is passive, it’s called transgression by passive omission. And therefore what I’m claiming is that it is still correct to identify positive commandments with positive action and prohibitions with passive omission — only the concepts of positive action and passive omission undergo abstraction. It’s not doing an act versus not doing an act, but active collision with God’s will versus passive collision with God’s will. Simply not doing what He said to do. Okay?
But then why use the language of positive action? Because that’s basically what lies behind that language. So I’m saying: because positive action is an indication. The human act itself — why does that matter? What lies behind it is that action is some kind of active rebellion against the Holy One, blessed be He, whereas here I am passive, right? That is the severity of action versus omission. Ask anyone who holds the practical view of the difference between prohibition and positive commandment. Ask him why a prohibition is more severe. He’ll tell you: because with a prohibition you do an active deed against God’s will, right? And with a positive commandment you just sit there and don’t do what He told you. But that’s not true. Sometimes by sitting you are doing something active against God’s will. For example, when you do not save someone who is drowning in a river. You do not save him. You are doing something passive, but it is a negative state to remain passive. Because what is required of you is not to be in that passive state. It is not a positive commandment to save him; it is a prohibition — “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.”
And therefore I claim that if you look at the root of the difference between positive action and passive omission, you arrive at my definition. This definition is not an alternative to the practical definition; it is an abstraction of it. Instead of speaking about the difference between positive action and passive omission, I speak about the difference between active collision and passive collision. Because that is what lies behind the difference between positive commandments and prohibitions. But now that I’ve already made this abstraction, I can completely get rid of the practical difference of whether I do an act or merely refrain. That’s not what matters. What matters is whether I am colliding actively or colliding passively. That’s what determines it. And then I completely abandon the practical definition of the difference between prohibition and positive commandment. Okay? That’s really the move of abstraction I’m talking about.
Now I’ll show you implications of this. You’ll see that this is an abstraction. Somebody worked it out with somebody, that somebody said a prayer over a person in the market… I’ll get to that. That’s one of the examples. I’ll get to it in a moment.
So we saw all sorts of implications of the difference between prohibition and positive commandment: the Sages uproot a matter from the Torah by passive omission, expenditure of money, punishment for a prohibition but not for a positive commandment, and a few more implications. One of the things is that the Sages can uproot a matter from the Torah by passive omission. Right? Basically they can cancel a positive commandment, but they can’t make me violate a prohibition. That they can’t do. So the obvious question is: what about a prohibition whose violation is passive, or a positive commandment whose violation is expressed actively? Can the Sages command that, or can’t they? That’s the implication of what I’m saying now.
So look: the Talmud in tractate Rosh Hashanah asks on page 16 why do we blow the shofar both while sitting and while standing? We blow thirty and another thirty and another thirty. Why twice? After all, even twice already gives us… why all this repetition? So the Talmud says: in order to confuse the Satan. And that is a rabbinic enactment. By strict law one needs only thirty blasts; we do another thirty to confuse the Satan. The medieval authorities there, both Rashi and Tosafot, struggle with the issue of “do not add.” The Torah requires thirty blasts from me; then the Sages come and say, no, blow another thirty. That’s “do not add”; you may not add to what the Torah said, and you may not subtract. How can the Sages command me to do more?
So Tosafot says: “One may ask, but doesn’t he thereby violate ‘do not add’?” Tosafot answers: “One can say that ‘do not add’ does not apply when one performs one commandment twice. For example, a priest who blesses and then blesses the same congregation again.” Priests who lift their hands and bless the same congregation twice — that is not “do not add.” There is no “do not add” in performing a commandment twice. And this is a dispute among the medieval authorities, but that is Tosafot’s view. So where would “do not add” apply? For example, if you add another strand to the tzitzit — instead of four, you put in five. Three times in the priestly blessing? What is that? Yes, doesn’t matter how many times. There is no “do not add” in adding more repetitions, but adding more details to the commandment is “do not add.” Meaning, doing the commandment not as the Torah prescribed — that is “do not add” or “do not subtract.” But doing exactly what the Torah said, just more than once, is not “do not add,” according to Tosafot.
The Rashba brings Tosafot’s words and disagrees with them. He claims: “They exerted themselves to establish this view, but it did not come out well in their hands, and it seems to me that there is no difficulty at all. For they only said there that there is a problem of ‘do not add’ when one adds on his own initiative, such as a priest who adds a blessing of his own or something like that. But where the Sages stood up and enacted something for a need, there is no ‘do not add’ here, for the Torah already said, ‘According to the law that they teach you.’” The Sages are exempted from the prohibition of “do not add.” When the Sages add, they enact a decree and tell me to add something; by definition they are not violating “do not add.” We don’t need explanations like saying that doing a commandment twice is not “do not add.” According to Tosafot we do need explanations, because Tosafot in principle holds that “do not add” also applies to rabbinic enactments. By the way, Maimonides agrees with him on this. But the Rashba claims otherwise. Rabbinic enactments are by definition excluded from the prohibition of “do not add.” They can enact decrees, and that’s what “do not turn aside” and all that means. Hanukkah and Purim with the blessings… Hanukkah and Purim with the blessings. So that’s what the Rashba says.
And on this the Rashba says: I’ll bring you proof. “For the eighth day of Sukkot in our time is a commandment of rabbinic origin because of doubt about the day, and we sleep and eat in it as a commandment.” Even though nowadays “we are experts in fixing the month,” we know the date today. But the Sages enacted — maybe the Temple will be rebuilt, whatever the reason — they enacted that we should still observe two days of the festival as if we were in doubt. And outside the Land of Israel we sleep in the sukkah also on the eighth day and not only on the seventh, right? Where they observe two days because of doubt. This is rabbinic law. Torah law does not require it. By Torah law, after the seventh day it’s over; the eighth is Shemini Atzeret. Okay? So how can it be that the Sages enact sitting in the sukkah one more time, and there is no “do not add”? You see that the Sages… says the Rashba — are excluded from this.
The Turei Even asks on this — it’s wonderful pilpul — he says: can’t the Sages, just as they can uproot the commandment, also uproot the prohibition of “do not subtract”? They can uproot the prohibition of “do not subtract” — and that too is a Torah prohibition, the prohibition that forbids subtraction, right? They can uproot the prohibition of “do not subtract” or “do not add,” and then there won’t be any prohibition on them. Okay? Then he says — well, that’s another matter — yes, he addresses “do not add.” He speaks about the Rashba’s second proof, which I didn’t quote. The Rashba’s second proof is the blowing of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah that falls on the Sabbath, where the Sages canceled a Torah commandment; they didn’t add, they subtracted. By rabbinic law they canceled the Torah commandment of shofar on Rosh Hashanah that falls on the Sabbath. So on that, this is the Rashba’s proof that the Sages are excluded from “do not subtract” and “do not add.”
On this the Turei Even asks: why? It could be that they subtracted the commandment… “do not subtract.” Now they do this by passive omission, right? No problem. So if so, what’s the issue? They could first uproot the prohibition of “do not subtract” by passive omission, and then there’s no problem — they can say, don’t blow the shofar when Rosh Hashanah falls on the Sabbath. Right? After all, not blowing is passive omission. So the Sages tell you by passive omission: don’t blow the shofar.
What’s the answer? That the Sages cannot uproot a prohibition. Even if it is by passive omission, they cannot uproot a prohibition. When they say that the Sages can uproot a matter from the Torah by passive omission and not by positive action, they do not mean omission rather than action. They mean a positive commandment rather than a prohibition. A positive commandment rather than a prohibition. And “do not add” is also a prohibition, right? And that they cannot uproot. Excluded, not excluded — the Rashba says it doesn’t apply to them, and he proves from there that it doesn’t apply to them. “Do not subtract” does apply? His claim is that that is not a proof; “do not subtract” also doesn’t apply. He says the proof the Rashba brings is not a proof. Why is it still a proof? Because if “do not subtract” did apply to them — as the Rashba thinks it doesn’t — then, according to the Turei Even, what would be the problem? They could have uprooted “do not subtract” by passive omission.
When you nullify a prohibition, that is by definition positive action. To nullify a prohibition, to uproot a Torah prohibition, is by definition positive action, even if you do it through omission. You do not blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah that falls on the Sabbath; so you are not blowing, that is passive, and apparently the Sages should be able to do that. But if the non-performance is a violation of a prohibition, the Sages cannot do that. And that is exactly the implication of what I said earlier. When the Sages say they can’t uproot a matter from the Torah by positive action, they don’t mean by action as opposed to omission. Rather, the Sages cannot uproot a prohibition; they can only uproot a positive commandment. That’s what it means. And it doesn’t matter whether the prohibition is fulfilled through action or omission, and the same with the positive commandment. What matters is whether they are permitting you to enter a negative state or forbidding you to enter a positive state. They can forbid you to enter a positive state, but they cannot require you to enter a negative state.
But the Talmud doesn’t speak in terms of prohibition. What? That’s what “passive omission” and “positive action” mean here. By the way, we should check in Aharon Shemesh’s research — maybe the formulation “passive omission” and “positive action” is a remnant from the earlier practical period, when people still identified positive commandments and prohibitions with the practical dimension, and the terminology simply remained into later periods as well. But I don’t know; that has to be checked, whether that’s really the reality. That’s the claim, okay?
There’s another proof. Regarding human dignity — I said this too is another implication — “human dignity overrides a Torah prohibition,” says the Talmud, but only by passive omission, not by positive action. It overrides Torah prohibitions, but only if you commit the prohibition passively and not actively.
Now, Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman in Kovetz Shiurim or in Birkat Shmuel asks why the Sages really can uproot a matter from the Torah by passive omission. What is the idea behind this, as opposed to positive action? As I asked earlier, why is it less severe to violate by passive omission than by positive action? That’s the question. He gives two possibilities for understanding it. One possibility is to say that a transgression by positive action and a transgression by passive omission are equally severe. Fine? There’s no difference. So what can the Sages say? They can say that once there is some value that the Sages place opposite the command of the Torah — right? — the Sages can say our value is equal to the Torah’s value. That’s what the Sages can say.
Now let’s see what comes out. If the Torah’s value obligates me to do something, fine, and the Sages say to me: but there is an opposing value telling you not to do something — once the two are equal, what are you supposed to do? Passive omission. You’re supposed to do nothing. What does “do nothing” mean? Not to fulfill what the Torah said, because the Torah told you to do it. Right? But if what the Torah tells you is a requirement not to do something — and that’s a prohibition — and the Sages set against it a positive value of equal weight, then what are you supposed to do? Again, do nothing. But in that case, doing nothing means obeying the Torah. And therefore the prohibition is not overridden.
Do you see? Exactly. Exactly. Better to remain passive. According to him, the Sages can equalize their value against the Torah’s value. They are permitted to create a tie. Why then the difference between prohibition and positive commandment? Not because this one is lighter than that one, but because practically, what happens in a state of tie is that the instruction is not to act. Whichever side it is. Once there’s a tie, you do nothing. And where the clash is against a prohibition, then doing nothing means… doing nothing means not failing in the prohibition. You don’t act, right? Whereas if the clash is against a positive commandment, then not acting means not fulfilling the positive commandment; that is not what the Torah wants.
Therefore human dignity overrides — the value in question here is human dignity, yes? — it is really equal in weight to the Torah’s commandment. And therefore when there is a clash between human dignity and a Torah value, you are supposed to do nothing. What does “do nothing” mean? If we are talking about a prohibition, then you are supposed to do nothing so as not to violate the prohibition, even if that harms human dignity, right? But if it is against a positive commandment and the clash is such that they tell you not to act, then what does that mean? That you preserve human dignity and neglect the positive commandment. That’s only by passive omission, right?
So it’s not because passive omission is a lighter transgression. It is the same transgression at the same level as positive action. The difference between passive omission and positive action emerges because the technical result works that way, not because one transgression is lighter than the other. Fine — I still need to show an implication here, so I’ll continue a bit more next time and then I’ll move on.